On the chopping block

The military top brass reportedly refused to allow its intelligence personnel involved in the wiretapping scandal to appear before the Senate to give their testimonies on what really happened.

The excuse is lame. There are too many ongoing investigations and the military prefers these investigations to complete their findings and just to await the results.

That sounds logical. But the implication of that move simply puts the President's neck on the chopping block. The question that the Senate simply wants to ask - who ordered and authorized the wiretapping?

A simple issue, but one that has serious implications that could bring down the government.

In denying the ISAFP personnel the right to answer the senators' questions, it seems evident that the orders must have emanated from somebody higher up than just the ISAFP commander. Maybe, even the AFP chief himself.

Or, as somebody pointed out in Manila, it could go up higher. Thus, as commander-in-chief, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo only aggravates her credibility before the public.

In effect, the AFP top brass inadvertently tossed the issue off to the commander-in-chief.

The reason: Until now, despite the initial hulabaloo about T/Sgt. Vidal Doble and his role in the "Mother of all Tapes" falling into the hands, of former NBI assistant Director Samuel Ong. The latter, according to Doble's No. 3 "girlfriend" reportedly paid the ISAFP man P2 million.

And she detailed before the Senate investigating committee how she, a person sans security clearance, had run off the wiretapping area.

The other side of the Marietta Santos' story. None of the senators had asked her whether she was also a government agent and had the necessary clearance to roam the place. If not, then that was a security breach of catastrophic implications.

That's not the point. The boiling issue is that until now the ISAFP nor the AFP has not ordered a probe into the wiretapping incident. A very serious oversight. That poses a lot of questions.

In short, that validates the theory by the opposition that the wiretapping case developed into a major scandal because while it was former Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano who was the subject of the eavesdropping, the President herself (assuming that it was really her voice in the tape) got bugged. And because the wiretap landed in the hands of Ong, then, the explosion.

Christmas is a time to meditate on the meaning of Christ's Nativity. Instead, the country is hooked in a major political controversy that could transform "Holy Night" into "Rocky Night."

And there is no end in sight to the controversy. It can only aggravate the political brickbats.

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Sugarmen rightly are worried why the Senate has not yet acted on the National Bioethanol bill despite the President's certification of it as urgent.

That was why the members of the PanayFed aptly issued their call on the upper chamber to act expeditiously on the ethanol measure. It seems that all the platitude about ethanol's saving the country so many millions of foreign reserves, has hit zero score.

Meanwhile, I have met during the past months several potential investors asking me questions that go into their feasibility study. That shows that a lot are waiting for the congressional go-signal. Unfortunately, until now that remains just a promise insofar as the Senate is concerned.

There are a lot of rumors about some groups of lobbying against the measure. I just hope that these stories are not true and that our solons surrendering the future stability of the country's energy future to what may be suspiciously just the profit of a handful of vested interests.

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My fault. My mistake. I forgot to mention that the floating luxury hotel of the Manila Hotel is actually the Stanley Ho proposed casino.

It is posh. And it has elevators to service the visits up to the sixtieth floor.

It is a place worth visiting.*

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